Website of the Mountains of Stars and Presidential Stargazing PRograms

About Our Programs

Environmental Awareness and Understanding from a Cosmic Perspective

Mountains of Stars is a public science education and outreach program in partnership with the Appalachian Mountain Club, Dartmouth College, Smith College, Stony Brook University and the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. Programs include lectures and presentations, workshops, planetarium programs, daytime and nighttime telescope observing programs (weather permitting), as well as observing activities with telescopes at Appalachian Mountain Club facilities from New Jersey to Maine. This program is supported by the National Science Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Toomey Foundation, and the VWR Foundation.

We have reached nearly 60,000 members of the public, and trained dozens of students and hundreds of nature educators in science communication and outreach skills. Our mission is to change the public's attitudes and actions towards the environment be bringing a 'big picture' cosmic perspective to humankind's place in the Universe, and our role on Earth as one of hundreds of millions of other species and an active participant on an evolving planet.

Mountains of Stars will be growing starting in 2020, with the additional participation of the Univ. of Oregon, Univ. of Texas at Austin, Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis, and the University of Vermont, each partnered with public science outreach and nature organizations across the United States.